There's a Radeon 3870 X2 coming out soon (next week I think) that looks interesting -- two 3870 GPUs on one card. MSRP is $449 and early previews say the performance is about 25% better than an 8800 Ultra.

That sounds like a good alternative to the 8800 Ultra, but that's a bit more than I'm willing to spend on a video card. With the way they advance, I hate to spend that much only to find it surpassed a few months later.

The important thing is that it'll give ATI the fastest single-card solution by a wide margin -- which might kick nvidia's ass into gear. Their roadmap for this year just consists of 9800s, which are merely die-shrunk rehashes of the 8800. Why bother releasing another generation when there's no competition to the current one?

The 9800 GX2 will be faster than the 3870X2, but it's not supposed to be released for another month at the earliest. It's also a real clunker, 2 separate PCBs joined in a kind of SLI that plugs into one pci-e slot, where the 3870X2 is 2 GPUs on one pcb.

So I'm hoping for an indirect benefit from the 3870X2 -- that it'll force nvidia to roll out its real next gen card earlier than planned, and give me an upgrade path that's more than just a slightly faster version of my old 8800. And who knows, maybe ATI will come out with a new card, multi-gpu or otherwise, that will blow away the updated 8800GTS at the same price point. That would be good too

It seems to me that GPU makers have a harder time doing things that CPU makers have been doing for some time, i.e. multi-core, 45nm process. It would be nice to see these cards advance without resorting to these monstrous solutions such as the nVidia GX2 card you mentioned or the X2's discrete GPU's. I have a 8800GTS right and that thing is huge. It dwarfs all the other components in my system. One thing I like about the Gigabyte 8800GT is apart from the extra thickness of the Zalman cooler, it's pretty much a standard size video card.

GPUs have more transistors than any single cpu core and are already massively parallel compared to a cpu -- over a hundred shader processing units in the newer ones for example. So you can't really compare the two in terms of structure. It might be getting to the point that cramming more processors into a single gpu has diminishing returns compared to going multi-gpu.

I guess a GPU is a more complicated device then. They definitely cost a lot more and use a lot more power than a CPU.

GPU makers are a generation behind Intel with their process technology. GPUs are getting more power efficient on average. And to make a completely fair comparison, you'd have to add the power consumption of the ram, the hsf, and a portion of the motherboard to that of the cpu I guess a similar rationale would apply to price comparisons as well.

interesting discussion...



this is true, but isn't it also true that they're becomming more power hungry, and at a rate that out-paces their efficiency improvements? i mean, my 8600 has a 4-pin peripherial power connector. a lot of 8800s use a 6-pin PCIe power connector, which doubles the rated overall wattage of the connection (i'm pretty sure watts are what i mean to be talking about).

IIRC some of the high-end cards use two 6-pin connectors, and other advanced VGAs use an 8-pin PCIe, which again doubles the wattage of a 6-pin. and i'm not sure on this, but i think some Radeon cards have an 8-pin and a 6-pin (though i'm pretty sure they're not meant to draw full power from both, but rather support lower rated PSUs in a low power consumption mode).

AFAIK, the newest cards (the Radeon 3800 series and the G92 8800s) have lower power consumption and better performance than their direct predecessors. Granted they still use a lot of power compared to cards from a few years back, but the hardware isn't really comparable. A card can have better performance/watt and still use more power compared to something less efficient but also much lower performance.

The very high-end cards also aren't really representative of the majority of cards sold. Their absolute performance is great, but they're not much concerned with relative measures like performance/dollar, watt or anything else.

I've seen some of those cards way up there in price. I really wonder who's buying them. It's not like you're paying 3 times more for 3 times better performance. Then it's only a comparitively average card a year later.

1. People with more money than brains.

2. People who play 3dmark more than actual games, or who live and die by the length of their e-penis.

(2) is likely a subset of (1).

Extra power on video cards is not new. There was at least one Voodoo card that used an External power supply.

I go back to the days when the IMSAI Altair 8080 was all the rage, and it only in kit form.

I go back when there were only mainframes.

Hehe, the first computer I ever used was an IBM S/370 circa 1979. I ran programs on it using punch cards. Now that was archaic.

The card that was such a white elephant it killed the company

Actually, 3DLabs got hit with Patent Infringement and/or Copyright Violation, and they nearly went under as a result. It did kill the Voodoo line, although they still make Workstation cards in the same class as Quadro and FireGL.

3DLabs != 3dfx.

I still have a couple of those old Voodoo cards laying around. They're quite worthless now that everything has gone to newer versions of DirectX which those cards don't support.

i had a voodoo card back in the day. i kinda wondered what happened to them; now i know.

After the Voodoo 6 fiasco they were bought out by nVidia. So if you have an nvidia card it's got some 3dfx DNA in its heritage

speaking of that, i got an old fortran card today at work. we recently completed installing "the smart classroom" (a mac lab featuring an instructor terminal with remote desktop to the other terminals... wow, real smart). but yeah, kinda cool to have. i was 16 and it was 1998 when i got my first computer, so it's waaay before my time.

Yea, you youngsters didn't get to see what life was like without cellphones, PDA's, laptop computers, video games, and the internet. There were a lot less distractions when I was that age in 1976. Although, I remember spending some time at the arcade playing games like Asteroids and Pac-Man.

Just another piece of advice on Power supplies, I know this is late but I did not see it mentioned. Many of the newer 600+ watt power supplies have a minimum load on them. If you do not reach that minimum load they either will not function or will function erratically. I currently have a power supply that has a minimum load requirement but I also run a CAD system with a huge raid array and between that the CPU and have a regular graphics card and a CAD card am well over that requirement, but a friend of mine bought the same power supply unknowning and had to return it because his computer did not meet it.

Now normally I do not say buy top of the line for parts, but there are two parts that generally do not change to often, one ever couple of years, and the other well pretty much the same, and thats Power and Memory, for memory you want something with a lifetime warranty, I can not tell you how often I have seen cheap memory fail in someones computer. As for the power supply, there are two reasons to pay top dollar, one is quality of components used, which translates into quality of power sent into your components, a bad power supply can fry components in a computer if it is constantly spiking or dropping voltage. The other is that most of the higher end power supplies come with a decent warranty, where as the cheaper ones do not.

Just things to consider

Luke

actually when i was really young my folks had a stand-up arcade machine in our home. don't know whatever happened to it.

also, i do remember what life was like before the various things you mention. granted, not adult life. but i have at least used a card catalogue before. but think about the kids being born now. not only will they probably never know a society without these high technologies, but by the time they're getting closer to my age, these things will probably be much more integrated than they are now. ultra-mobile PCs can basically do all the things you list. i'm sure they're not the preferred platform for 3D gaming, but i can imagine them eventually coming to a place where they can compete with the PSP and Gameboy DS.

there are also some big technologies i think i can expect to see become common in my lifetime. for example, the 2000 nobel prize in chemistry was awarded for the development of electro-conductive polymers. the third recipient's contribution invovled developing atom groups that could be appended to the end of a polymer chain which would emit red, green or blue light when a charge reached it.

roll-up monitor screens. clothing with sewn-in electronic circuits. cheaper PCs. the list goes on. what's more, these polymer chains can be insulated fairly cheaply using carbon filaments. should be a very interesting time. if we don't blow our selves up first, that is.

When I was considering a dual, dual core Opteron setup, I decided to download the pdf manual for the motherboard. In there, it stated clearly that the mobo required a Minimum of 647 Watt EPS PSU for stable operation.

I mention this so that you won't buy an underpowered PSU and learn the hard way:

When considering a mobo, download and read the pdf manual before committing to a PSU.

I think the most exciting thing to see will be the establishment of habitats on the Moon and Mars. Consumer electronics can be great to see, but I don't think anything holds a candle to space exploration.

BTW, I'm very happy with that 8800GT video card I bought. I recommend it. I'm getting scores around 12k on 3DMark06. My big old monsterous 8800GTS only scored around 10K. AFAIC, that's a pretty large performance gain. Also, that Zalman cooler really does the job. It doesn't even break 60C on heavy load.